Coinbase Singapore has received an in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide digital payment token services in the city-state.
With this approval, which was granted under the Payment Services Act, the company can now have individuals and institutions accessing digital payment token services through its platform, it said on Tuesday.
So far, about 15 firms, including rival platform Crypto.com, have received such permits since Singapore launched the licensing regime in 2019.
Hassan Ahmed, head of Southeast Asia at Coinbase and CEO of Coinbase Singapore, said the republic will be a “beachhead” for the company’s planned expansion in the Asia-Pacific, specifically to markets like Indonesia and Vietnam which present attractive opportunities.
In the past year, Coinbase Singapore has expanded its R&D team to make up one-third of its Singapore workforce, according to news reports.
Besides Singapore, Coinbase is registered in the US, Australia and Japan. The company unveiled a revamp of its operations in Australia earlier this month, as part of its efforts to bolster its growth overseas, Ahmed said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, the team leading Coinbase Ventures has invested in over 15 Singapore-based Web3 startups in the past three years, according to the company.
“We see Singapore as a strategic market and a global hub for Web3 innovation. MAS is a lighthouse regulator for the region, with a rigorous and pro-business approach that balances responsible innovation and customer protection,” said Ahmed.
He also pointed to Australia and Japan as “very key markets within the broader APAC sort of region that we’re going to continue to double down on”.
Singapore has been emerging as a key crypto hub in Asia, with a regulatory regime seen as more comprehensive than that of rival financial centre Hong Kong. However, the pace of issuing licences has been slow, following a string of industry upheavals that has caused the local regulator to take on a more cautious stance when granting approvals.
For instance, Three Arrows, a crypto hedge fund which had operations in Singapore, is being liquidated after aggressive bets on digital assets blew up as token prices crumbled.
In another example, Hodlnaut, a crypto lender which holds a licence in Singapore, was granted protection from creditors by the High Court in August after the market rout prompted it to halt withdrawals.
Around the same time, MAS said it is considering restricting retail investors’ use of leverage and credit facilities to trade digital assets.
Coinbase’s pursuit of international growth comes just after it cut almost a fifth of its workforce.
The company’s Q2 2022 revenue and trading volume also missed estimates. For reference, shares are down 73% year-to-date, underperforming the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 100 Index’s 60% decline.
Founded in 2012, Coinbase has over 100 million verified users globally.